₦airaland Forum

bgees:
he loves children.

So if he comes back today, is he going to gather all children from all over the world, or is he gonna just take those of Christian families who can repent and have repented?

Bastage:
Why does there have to be a line?

There has to be a line because Christianity teaches about this notion of repentance.   Is repentance available to everyone, at any age?

Does Jesus love children? Who is a child in the eyes of Jesus? Is it a one day old, one month old, 6 months old, one year old, eight years old, 18 years old? Who really is a child in the eyes of Jesus?


If Jesus were to come today would he take up into heaven (or whatever), without further judgment, all the millions and millions children who are one month or less old? Or is it 6 months old, 1 year old? Where shall he draw the line?

spikedcylinder:
You should not debate, its useless. Just smile through their crap, its the only thing that works.
I live in Lagos, I'm 24.

I am glad for you, that you came to this realisation relatively young in life. There is nothing as immoral as spending a lifetime in a deceitful and corrupt organisation like religions and Christianity. There is just no way one can live a philosophically consistent life that accords more with the true nature of reality as a religionist. You all the better for having made this discovery early in your life.

I would like to urge you to think about how your life might be in 15, 20 30 years time? Do you think the main and significant people in your life would be deceitful, morally corrupt, intellectually dishonest religionists? Could you bear coming home to find your children being taught the narratives of Genesis as though there were true? Could you bear sending your children to schools that taught them that 2+4=10?

Any new view?

How often do you go shopping for designer clothes, suits, cars, home furniture, etc with your esteemed pastors, the likes of Pastor Enoch Adeboye, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, Pastor T.b Joshua?  How would you like to contribute some cash towards the purchase of these items for your pastors?   If you have never, I would advise that you ask your pastors for permission to accompany him/her on his/her next shopping spree.   While you are helping  and funding his/her shopping for these luxury items,  both of you might want to ponder on what Jesus is said to have said, Matthew 19: 21.



                                                                Go sell all your possessions, give the money to the poor and come follow me.



In fact, have any of their sermons every been based on this verse?

Hello Spikedcylinder,

Am curious about how you came to atheism in an environment like Nigeria. What lines of thought or reasoning led you to disbelieve the claims of the superstitionist that seem to occupy every nook and cranny in Nigeria.

I really LOVE the idea of two atheists, meeting here on NL and eventually getting married.   Wouldn't that be lovely.

On a lighter note,  don't you guys think this calls to more organising and activism amongst the atheist, wherever they may live.  Surely such organising would create more opportunities for them to meet and even marry and raise rational, freethinking and scientifically-minded children.

Watch it here

A toxic diplomacy
Written by Obi Nwakanma
Sunday, 22 February 2009



THE tension of Nigeria’s ethnic architecture reared up its head decisively again in the last one week when the letter written to foreign minister, Mr. Ojo Maduekwe by the now erstwhile ambassador to the United States, Oluwole Rotimi, a brigadier and former military governor of the Western State, came to light.

In the letter, just not so as to rehash the circumstance as to highlight its implication and context, the former Brigadier Rotimi had written with elephantine angst to the foreign minister, calling him a “tribalist” and suggesting that he had dealt with people like him before.

How so? Well, Brigadier Rotimi had been, he wrote, the quartermaster-general of the Nigerian Army that dealt with Biafra’s “rag-tag army” of which Ojo Maduekwe was a captain. In swift response, the foreign minister had copied the president, pointing to the utter disdain which the presumptuous Rotimi held both his person and his office, and as events have proved, began what Brigadier Rotimi can now hardly call a “rag-tag” effort to recall the man from his sinecure position as ambassador to the United States.

The background to this situation might as well reflect the profound inadequacies and incompetence that generally characterize Nigeria’s public service, rooted as it were, in the profound cracks in the ideas of a nation which has now come to see sensitive public positions as ethnic pay-off or preferment rather than as an effort at nation-building.

The situation with Brigadier Oluwole Rotimi we have come to learn, came to its decisive heights during the inauguration of the US president, Mr. Barack H. Obama, when the Nigeria ambassador broke all known diplomatic protocols by shunting the foreign minister and chief ambassador in his introduction of the Nigerian delegation.

He had in fact treated Ojo Maduekwe with contempt and had introduced Mr. Emeka Anyaoku, former secretary-general of the Commonwealth, as head of the Nigerian delegation.

This was an act of gross insubordination, and came to its quite hilarious acme when Ambassador Rotimi, in response to the foreign minister’s query about his conduct went off the cliff of reason and launched what can now be described as the greatest diplomatic faux pas in Nigeria’s diplomatic history.

The ambassador’s dispatch to his principal was not only dripping with personal insult it was replete with toxic history. Rotimi woke the restless ghosts of Nigeria’s most terrible national disaster: the civil war in which millions of the Igbo and other Easterners had been killed, deliberately starved, and raped.

That Rotimi, a key player in that event would still puff with unimaginable candour for his role in that slaughter points to something egregious and irresolvable in the national psyche of a nation and the context of national belonging.

In fact, while Rotimi’s role as quarter-master gneral in that event did not bring him directly to the fields, he now bears direct historical responsibility for supplying the armies that committed grievous evil against the civilian populations of the East and much of the Midwest.

The massacres at Asaba in which the Nigerian Army selectively annihilated an entire generation of men, from the age of fifteen and above, who had been called out at the Ogbo-Ogonogo square to be executed, remains fresh in many minds.

The writer and journalist, Emma Okocha, whose family had been virtually wiped out by that act has written a most unforgettable book of that event, which he has called Blood on the Niger, a haunting account of the operations of the Army of which Oluwole Rotimi had been quarter-master general, and of which he remains quite inordinately proud.

There are many more accounts waiting to be written about the very genocidal acts of that war, of the bombing of civilian targets: markets, schools, hospitals, and even relief planes flying the cross of mercy, which had been shot down deliberately to enforce the food blockade of Biafra. There are many unmarked graves from Afor-Umuohiagu to Uzuakoli of innocent people who were killed by the guns sent to the fields by the quartermaster-general.

This is all too true. But what Oluwole Rotimi could never in good conscience say was that the Biafran forces were a “rag-tag” army. It was a disciplined force which held its grounds for three years. Indeed, it was an army which the French ambassador who visited Biafra in the period said: “before I came, I thought the Biafrans fought like real men.

Today I know that real men fight like the Biafrans.” But because Brigadier Rotimi wanted to exact his full quarter of history in a futile fight with his superior, he had to sneak it all in, gloating about his exploits in the defeat of “a rag tag army” of which the current foreign minister was but indeed a subaltern.

These talks would have far less significance had there not been, within the context of post-war Nigerian history, a sense that the Igbo who returned to Nigeria have felt increasing isolation and alienation from the centre of Nigerian affairs.

There have also been two streams of thought in Igboland, one which seems to suggest that the Igbo should forgive and integrate fully to Nigerian affairs irrespective of the egregious and obnoxious compacts that consistently seek to reduce its stakes in Nigeria, and the other which tends to feel that the Igbo should begin to deal very decisively with any further acts of violence of any kind - physical or epistemic - against it; essentially as deterrent to anybody who might seek unwarranted heroism on Igbo dead or interest. Among the last group have been advocates for bringing those who committed war crimes against the Igbo to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal.

This group believes that had the Igbo taken these people to answer before the court of conscience, that such fatuous gloating by people like Oluwole Rotimi who prefer not to let the Igbo continue to chew their cuds on these matters, and quietly mourn their dead, would have been long resolved, and equifinally.


Perhaps someone should remind Brigadier-General Rotimi, that war crimes in international law have no time bars.

The other aspect of this is that Brigadier-General Rotimi, unfortunately, has tapped into what many now see as the historical faultlines in the ethnic relationship between the Yoruba and the Igbo.

I need to say this quite upfront, that General Rotimi’s comment does not reflect the Yoruba people, or their ordinary feelings about the Igbo with whom they have, to the best of my experiences, remained in healthy and fair competition as do many competitive cultures.

But it does seem that General Rotimi belongs to the party of the Yoruba elite in that historical divide who found their voices and discovered their lifetime work in the deconstruction of the Igbo as vital forces in the building of this nation.

The unfortunate thing is that General Rotimi is an educated man: one of the earliest university trained Nigerians to be commissioned into the officers corps of Nigerian Army, having earned the degree of the University of London.

But his career was made in the bloodbath: he took over from the slain Arthur Unegbe as quartermaster-general; he became the governor of Western Nigeria under the Gowon administration, and he was apparently among those who held sway in enforcing a Carthaginian treaty with the East in spite of the “no victor, no vanquished” treaty that ended that war.

General Rotimi must be in some funk of war. It is so, I suggest, because many years later, he remains quite unaware that the war has ended.

The Igbo have moved on. Indeed, the Igbo moved on to other things by January 16, 1970, one day after armistice was declared on both sides of the conflict.

It is only sad that because people like Oluwole Rotimi remained influential in the affairs of Nigeria, and continued for many years to harbour, it seems, not the Olympian dreams of building a great country, but the Olympian dreams of teaching Igbo a lesson for daring to be at lead, from the anticolonial agitation to the first years of independence, and thus stamped their authority firmly, and in so doing, stamped on the egoistic feet of the Oluwole Rotimis of this world, Nigeria continues to have an Igbo problem. Rotimi was part of the project of a final solution on the Igbo problem.

But even that failed. It failed because, somehow, people transcend the straps that hold them bound to oppressive time and history. To heal Nigeria is a historical task. People like Oluwole Rotimi will have to give way. It is proper, therefore, that he has been recalled from his post by the president.

I did ask the a WHY question about sickle-cell amaemia, as in;

Quote from: huxley on Today at 02:52:21 AM
For instance, WHY does a mutation happen to cause some AFRICANS to have sickle-cell amaemia? Why does a mutation happen to confer some viruses and bacteria resistance to drugs?

And this is what you said:

davidylan:
1. Sickle cell anaemia is an example of a random mutation that is deleterious to the organism and actually serves NO beneficial effect. Very few carriers of sickle cell on both alleles survive beyond 40. If this is your own example of evolution then its a mystery that we are still alive today.

Not only does this NOT answer the question, it is also wrong. A WHY question should be answered in terms of supplied a REASON or rationale to address the puzzle in the question. You have clearly not done this.


Let me put it in a different context - WHY do errors happen when DNA replicates? Why do some Europeans have mutations that result in cyctic fibrosis? Forget about evolution for the moment and just deal with the WHY question. WHY do MUTATIONS happen?

Further, it is well known that sickle-cell anaemia confers resistance to infection of certain types of blood infection, notable malaria. Is resistance against malaria infection NOT a beneficial affect?


Am afraid, you have turned this into a religious debate, rather than a scientific debate of honestly evaluating evidence. (For instance, you cannot answer a simple WHY question). For that reason, I am out of here. When you begin to address the science, then I may come back.

Quote from: huxley on Today at 02:20:08 AM
As common as genetic malformations are,  do you think it is possible for a genetic malformation to result in the birth of a human child with feathers?

davidylan:
No.

Your answer appears to be a caterogic NO.   Why NO?


Why could humans not have feathers, or scales (as in fish and reptiles), or claws (as in cats and dogs)?  If you understand this, then you would have then answers to your earlier questions about deformities and malformations.

davidylan:
This is simply trying to avoid dealing with concrete questions. Amazing how you folks love to dance around criticism that pokes gaping holes in your theories you wish to force on us as "facts". If we tried to do so with the bible you'd be the first to call us out on it.

If evolution cannot tell us WHY organisms evolve then how come evolutionists try to con us with adaptation and natural selection when it suits them? What is the point of evolution if it is just a random event with no particular goal?

Most of these "studies" are actually done on very scant evidence, which is the major reason a lot of these questions are hard for you folks to answer.

But you said earlier that evolution doesnt tell us WHY we evolve? Which shld i believe now?  

Evolution teaches that organisms evolve as more favourable traits increase with successive generations. Why would the whale lose its ability to live on land completely if it were simply down to evolution? Was there no land at all so the whale was forced to ditch its limbs and take to the sea?

But the pigmy hippo primarily lives in the rain forest belt not water unlike the river hippo . . .   Are you sure you know what you are saying?

But crocodiles, alligators, seals refused to make the sea their permanent home? What happened? They had no prey in water unlike the whale?

No such "trail of fossils" exist . . . if you have them pls show us concrete proof.

huh?  

But when you started talking about atavism (not vestigial organs as i was the one who brought that up), you mentioned the appendix and the coccyx as examples . . . here in your own words - [size=14pt]Any theory of sudden appearance of animals MUST explain common features that exist with past generation of animals and it MUST  also explain why organism (including humans) possess atavism that appear to serve no purpose for the present animals (for instance, the appendix in humans.  Or why some humans are born with a tail, including a tailborn.  What is the gene if a tailborn doing in our genome?)[/size]

Are you perchance confused?

The reason no one can say definitely WHY an organism evolved is because evolution is a combination of "random" mutation AND selective pressure.  The better way to put this is that we cannot know apriori because we cannot know WHY a mutation happens, ONLT that it happen.

For instance, WHY does a mutation happen to cause some AFRICANS to have sickle-cell amaemia?   Why does a mutation happen to confer some viruses and bacteria resistance to drugs?

As far as I know, no humans have the answer as to why mutation happens, only that they happen.   If we do not know why mutation happens, we cannot know why evolution by Natural Selection happens.   But that does not mean that we cannot explain how some of  the adaptive morphological feature evolved.


Unbeknowst to your religion infected mind mind, you have just made the case for TTE by stating the pygmy hippo case.   The river and forest hippos are two species on different evolutionary pathways.  It is quite concievable that in 50 - 80 million years, there may be descendants of the river hippo that have completely lost their legs, while the forest hippo may continue with no or little change in that same time frame.

On the bit about the definition of atavism and vestigial above, notice that i used the words "NOT neccesarily".    In fact, I had in mind to add that an organ may be an atavism as well as a vestigial organ, but I just missed that.  The appendix is clearly an atavistic and vestigial organ.   In anycase, this is not a semantic debate.    It is a debate of whether organs that previously existed in our past are capable of re-appearing back, thus confirming that we still have those genes in our genomes.

Thes questions are:

1)  Do we have genes for making the tailbone in our genome?
2)  Do we have the genes for making feathers in our genome?
3)  Do whales have the genes for making legs in their genome?


These are the questions and don't get lost in the forest.

davidylan:
actually the discussion is partly about what you dont know but arrogantly assume you know. The coccyx = tailbone in humans . . . no question about that. We are not dealing with rocks here.

What did you expect me to give you? An entire textbook on the human vertebral column?  

A baby is born with 4 arms and 4 legs . . . what did it evolve from? A beetle?
A baby is born with "horns" on the head . . . what did it evolve from? A cow?
A baby is born with polydactyly . . . what did it evolve from? A spider?

The incredulous propensity for "evolutionists" to claim that congenital malformations is "proof" of where we allegedly originated from beggars belief.

You may not realise it,  BUT this is a VERY good point.   Before, I get down to it.  Let me just ask the following question:


As common as genetic malformations are,  do you think it is possible for a genetic malformation to result in the birth of a human child with feathers?

davidylan:
I already dealt with the coccyx and appendix eons ago . . . you deliberately ignored it. Start from there first . . .

Kindly help us understand this little problem . . . if indeed the humpback whale has a "vestigial pelvis", why does the male have a different one to that of the female? The pelvis in man is essentially the same except for minor differences in size.

You are simply making noise . . . evolutionists claim the whale was once a land mammal;

1. Why then did it need to lose its legs and go back to water?
2. Where are its vestigial lungs if it once breathed like humans? It certainly didnt breath on land with gills did it?

those are critical questions you shld tackle rather than cowering behind verbose words that convey nothing.

Firstly, you need to understand some basics about evolution.   Evolution cannot tell you WHY an organism evolve,  if why is meant here as an intentional act (as in - why did you go to the shop?)  There is certainly an explanation (or a how-to) but it may not always be available to us, given that  most of these studies are done on events many millions of years old.

The role of evolution is to confer to the organism that ability to move into a new adaptive space.   Take for instance the hippo, that spense 80% of its time in water, emerging briefly to feed and them going back to the depths of its aquatic home.  It is thought that the ancestors of the whale lead a  life like the hippo.  Today, the hippo's skin is actually maladapted to living on dry land, showing that it is already on the way to a fully aquatic life.

The ancestors of the whales would have found excellent adaptive space in the waters around them, perhaps going into water occasional to catch prey, or escaping predator, or  just for relaxing like the hippos do.  Over many millions of years, they slowly made this their permanent home.

And there is plenty of evidence, besides the atavistic legs, to show that whales are mammals from the land:

1)  The trail of fossils along the whale line of descent shows the slow progress of the nose from the snout to the top of the head
2)  There are also many adaptation to the inner ear to deal with hearing in water as oppose to hearing on land
3)   Many changes to the skull, neck, etc, etc.




By the way,   atavistic and vestigial organs are NOT necessarily the same thing.   A vestigial organ is an organ that no longer performs the function it originally did but many perform other or minor roles.  Such organs as the appendix are vestigial.

Atavism are organs that do not generally appear (visible) on the animals and thus does not perform a role. The whales legs is a case in point.

davidylan:
You dont seem to know much about whales . . . if not you'd have spotted my earlier error . . . whales have lungs not gills.

You are absolute right. I don't know much about whale, but I know enough to know that they are mammals descended from ancestors that once lived on land with 4 legs. Just as I don't know much about walruses, or the sloth, or the Kapaka.

davidylan:
Enough of insulting science . . . The coccyx (IPA: /ˈkɒksɪks/, KOK-siks), commonly referred to as the tailbone, is the final segment of the human vertebral column.

- Wikipedia

The coccyx IS the tail bone dumbo.

How does this mean an insult to science.   The discussion is NOT about what I know or don't know.   If I don't know a fact, I will seek the best available source to learn about it.   Is there any shame in that?

Now,  this is all you said about the tailbone early.

2. tail bone/coccyx  - Is attached to important muscles that control bowel movement and support some abdominal organs. Try asking a dude without his tail bone how easy it is to sit down.

In your so called learned opinion, is this the  best treatment you can give?  There is a wealth of information on the web, on books, journals, etc, etc.  Is this really the best you can give?

How about human tails that grow to be several inches long, complete with nerve, blood, skin and hair as I have given many references to above.   Is the elongated bit that sticks out a tail?   I posted a photo of just such a tail, showing the unfused vertebrae ( just as in a monkey tail).    Have you address it?

davidylan:
Your own post from Feb 15, 2009:

Any theory of sudden appearance of animals MUST explain common features that exist with past generation of animals and it MUST also explain why organism (including humans) possess atavism that appear to serve no purpose for the present animals (for instance, the appendix in humans. Or why some humans are born with a tail, including a tailborn. What is the gene if a tailborn doing in our genome?)

The tailbone is known as the coccyx in humans . . . i thought you already knew that oh wise one.

- Your claim on "vestigial organs" comes from Robert Wiedersheim's false claims . . . he famously included such organs as the thymus and pituitary gland . . . the reason the list has shrunk is because over time science has realised he was wrong. You are still bandying the coccyx and the appendix around NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE REALLY VESTIGIAL ORGANS but because they are what is left on dear old Bob's list that most people like you are still clueless about.

I believe the coccyx is a bone present in everyone, on which the tailbone would be attached (or mounted) if there was one. In fact, the tailbone may actually be the extention of the coccyx that has not fully retracted at the foetal stage. (Am off to check on, just to be sure).

The 1893 list may or may not contain the scientific facts. What matters is whether the evidence supports it, not whether it was drawn up by Bob, Dick, or Harry. Why do you think many other items have dropped from the list, and how was the filtering done? Is it possible that the scientific method was instrumental in narrowing down the list, or was it some sort of revelatory methods or some old folk tales.

davidylan:
too much illiterate psychobabble. I notice you have AGAIN avoided ANY direct rebuttal to your earlier false claim acknowledging that our thymus, appendix, coccyx e.t.c are vestigial organs only to run around scrounging up for humpback whales? Where we discussing whales here at all? 

Stay on one topic, you seem to be stumbling around for just about anything that will stick . . .

Oh, dear.   What false charge you level against me.   If you look at my post above you would see that I never claimed our thymus, coccyx were vestigial organs.   You are trying to project that to me, a behaviour that does not surprise me.   This is exactly what I said

[b]The current view is that less that 1 % of dead organism are able to form fossils.  The figure is even less amongst soft-bodied organism.  Can you show me any scientific arguments that contradict this position?   I want arguments and data,  NOT ramblings from your dogma.


You then further went on to argue that the fossil records shows animals appearing suddenly over periods of time.   I asked you to be specific  about what you meant by suddenly.  To most people's understanding, the word suddenly is an adjective descriptive of the duration of an event.  So if animals appeared suddenly - how sudden?   1 day, 1 month, 1 year, 10 years,  10 million years, 200 million years, etc?


If they appear suddenly as you say, why do they seem to retain features of preceding generations of animals?   And further, why is it that in most cases, the retain features that soon go out of use (atavism) or are put to different use?


Any theory of sudden appearance of animals MUST explain common features that exist with past generation of animals and it MUST  also explain why organism (including humans) possess atavism that appear to serve no purpose for the present animals (for instance, the appendix in humans.  Or why some humans are born with a tail, including a tailborn.  What is the gene if a tailborn doing in our genome?)

[/b]

I you really want to engage this discussion, it behooves you to deal with the issues I present rather than make claims I did not make.  I mentioned atavisms in the form of the appendix and the human tailbone and I have added the atavism in whales.  I could add some more, but let's deal with these.   I was not making an argument from the defunct list of 1893 you presented.

davidylan:
Before i address the whale issue let me posit this question . . . what was the evolutionary benefit for humpback whales losing their hindlimbs?

Premise for the question - since humpbacks allegedly once had hindlimbs, we can argue that they once were terrestial animals . . . what then would be the benefit of losing those limbs only to end up as animals with NO abiility to live on land any longer?

If you have not learnt this by know, allow me to advise you about this.  As a general principle, the fact that you (or any individual ) is incapable of thinking of a plausible explanation for an event does not mean that that event is for ever incapable of being explained. In fact, this is called The Argument of Personal Incredulity, which should ONLY be used by dunces and people with intellectual pretensions.

As it turns out, there are many evolutionary advantages to be had for the whale losing its legs.  For a start, it minimises the drag on its body as it swims and it confers it a more streamlined shape.  Are there advantages for having a torpedo shape in water?   I shall leave that to you imagination (of course, assuming you have one).